We’d love to see these maps used around the web, so we’ve included some brief instructions to help you use them in the mapping system of your choice. These maps are available free of charge but with attribution. Details at any of the links above.

The Geolabels website offers another image option button for Google Maps, along with the standard Map, Satellite, and Hybrid buttons: Relief. This button gives you views of the terrain in an area, shaded by light at an angle and color.

Go to the website, and either zoom in on an area of interest, or enter the name of a populated place in the box at the upper left and click “Go” (if you hit “Enter” after typing in the name, you’re likely to get an error screen). At left, you will get a list of world localities in the database that match that name; click on one, and the map will zoom in on that location (click on the image for a larger view):

You will also get a marker at the location of the name you entered, along with a message box showing latitude and longitude to way too many decimal places. You can zoom in for a closer view:

Or zoom out:

Major rivers and bodies of water, major highways, and populated places are also shown on the map. Keep in mind, though, that the color shading represents altitude, not vegetation, e.g. in the image above, all that green around Phoenix definitely doesn’t represent lush vegetation. Other sites offer contours or topo maps in the Google Maps interface, but the Geolabels website is a nice complement to them.

A panorama of what’s visible from that location, marking the position of peak geographic landmarks

A list of the peaks, and the ability to show their position relative to your location on Google Maps

Terrain profiles (elevation versus distance from the location to any point on the map)

A plot all the areas visible from that location in red on Google Maps (aka the “viewshed” or “weapons fan”)

Contour lines (zoom in for these)

Google Earth export of position, viewshed, horizon line and horizon extent. If the viewshed area is large, this might strain the memory capacity of lesser systems.

It uses 30-meter SRTM version 1 data for its calculations, so there may be some quirks depending on whether there are holes in the SRTM coverage for your area. They’re switching over to SRTM version 2 soon, which is better but still not perfect. It only works in the US right now, but according to OgleEarth, they hope to expand coverage worldwide. A cool site! Check the OgleEarth posting for more info.